Doing Business in the UK

Corporation tax is tax on the taxable profits of limited companies. Taxable profits for Corporation tax purposes include:

* profits from taxable income such as trading profits and investment profits (except dividend income which is taxed differently)

* capital gains (known as "chargeable gains" for Corporation tax purposes). CGT is 18%.

If you are liable for corptax you need to a) inform HMRC, b) file a tax return on time. There are different rules depending on whether company is active or dormant.

What are EEV standards?

EEV stands for "enhanced environmentally FRIENDLY" vehicle. Emissions standards take into account Co2, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide emissions.

Firex Smoke Alarms

Firex brand smoke alarms are the best selling among contractors in the electrical wholesale market - they are AC powered with battery backup.
Electrical wholesalers include e.g. QVS and Wilts.

What is quad band?

Quad band refers to mobile phones which support 4 frequency bands, to allow global roaming.

GSM initially started in Europe with 2 frequency bands: one in 900MHz range and 1800 MHz. When GSM technology crossed into America, two extra frequencies were allocated (since the existing European frequency bands were already allocated to devices by the FCC).

GSM pioneered SMS (Short Message Service) or "text messaging" which has become incoporated into other mobile standards as well.

The Art of the Ethernet

Imagine you have two laptops, one with a working Ethernet configuration, call this laptop A, the other with an Ethernet connection which has "limited or no connectivity", call it laptop B (B for "bad").

To get B working, do ipconfig /all on A, which will return the TCP/IP configuration for all adapters (such as Ethernet adapter for Bluetooth, Wireless LAN Adapter, Ethernet adapter for LAN connection, Tunnel adapter LAN and so forth).

Pay special attention to DHCP and DNS server configurations.

Note on some Vista machines/accounts you may not be able to ping: "unable to contact IP driver error code 5" indicates this problem.

Basting

Baste has many meanings.

One is to to moisten (e.g. meat) periodically with a liquid, such as melted butter or sauce, especially while cooking.

Another is to beat vigorously, thrash.

The Different Kinds of Coffee

Espresso - concentrated coffee. Its prepared by FORCING hot water under pressure through finely ground coffee. It has very concentrated flavour. Consequently, espresso is used a base for other coffees, like latte, capuccino, macchiato and mocha. Shots of espresso are created by espresso machine. Espresso with brandy is called "carajillo" ("Little Kid").

1. Americano is a coffee made by adding hot water to espresso. It is a "watered down" espresso.

2. Latte is espresso with steamed milk.

3. Cappucino is like latte with less milk and more foam.

4. Mocha is one third espresso, two thirds steamed milk, and blended with chocolate. It is named after the town called al-Mocha in Yemen. The coffee-chocolate mixture was developed by Europeans.

5. Macchiato - sometimes known as "espresso macchiato", is an espresso with a small amount of hot, foamed milk.

Buying a Yacht

Yacht-builder Azimuth, based in Turin, Italy (on the banks of the Po River) has some new models for 2009. Check them out here. Azimuth also owns Benetti, an Italian luxury ship-building company.

YachtWorld has some profiles of boats for sale.

Hulls are often constructed from fiberglass, i.e. extremely fine fibers of glass. It originated under the trade name Fiberglas, which has become a genericised trademark, much like "xerox".